Here's a special look behind the scenes at one of the shots I worked on this past week!
This past week was all about implementing five scenes that I'd prepared the backgrounds for during my prep week.
Here's what I ended up getting done:
- Four scenes completed
- One music track composed
So, I consider this pretty successful — I got so much done this week that it would be pretty silly to consider it a failure. I even had time to whip up a Methods "chill beats" compilation.
For the crowd scenes, I came up with a solution: crowds aren't traced, they're just the 3D models. It's not as jarring as you'd think, and the amount of time it saves me is priceless. You may recall, if you've been reading literally every update post I've ever put out, that during Methods I'd planned to create crowd scenes, and mentioned a possible solution. Well this was that solution — using 3D models. The problem with doing this on Methods is that those characters all have their own color scheme, clothing, and posture. Making a 3D model crowd would've required a large variety of 3D models. However, in Catalyst Wake, the crowds I need are all same-y looking and only require one or two models.
Despite this shortcut, I wasn't able to meet my goal. There are two reasons — First, I underestimated how long it would take to set up the shots I needed for the last scene. And second, I underestimated how many CGs I was going to need for the last scene.
Still, on Wednesday and Sunday I actually made over 20 CGs, exceeding my 14-a-day goal! Thanks to that, I had time to properly set up one of the other scenes. I realize now that making 20 CGs in one day isn't something I should be able to expect of myself, at least not for a full week. I got pretty tired. I'll be splitting the remaining 26 CGs I still need to complete for the scene across today and tomorrow.
This final week of February will be another prep week. The idea is to complete every single background and set up I need to finish "MIST", so that making CGs will be all I need to do. The last background I'm making is going to have lots of custom props in it. It needs to be pretty detailed, since it might turn out to have more than a hundred CGs (the final scene is really long).
Even when I finish the final scene in MIST, I'm going to have to redo some of the old scenes I made back in 2019, since they aren't consistent with the new style. Those revisions also require new backgrounds, which I'll try to get around to this week.
Until next time,
— LockedOn.